


Some might say we will find a brighter day

by ShariDeschain



Category: X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Mild Smut, somewhere along the original timeline
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-08
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2018-02-16 16:19:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2276355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShariDeschain/pseuds/ShariDeschain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>When Logan had brought Gambit with him at the school for the first time, and hence made the proper introductions, Gambit had smiled when he had learned about her power. "A woman not to upset", he commented, while kissing her gloved hand. "Not that I would ever think of doing such a thing", he quickly added. Luckily a sharp slap from Logan had distracted him from seeing her blush.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Some might say we will find a brighter day](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7147166) by [Shari (ShariDeschain)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShariDeschain/pseuds/Shari). 



She lies face down on the hard mattress, her face half-buried in the pillow, and her hair, full of dust and ashes, scattered all around. Her back, her torso and her arms burn and bleed from hundreds of different wounds ─ all gifts from a Sentinel she had foolishly believed dead ─ the blanket she's covered with is rough and old, like pastboard, and it rubs against her naked body, but Rogue doesn't complain. Pain and discomfort she can bear them all too well, it's only against apathy that she has no weapons. 

And it's the apathy that now threatens to overwhelm her, while she lies in this shabby shelter that - apart from the spiders and mice hidden in the cracks of the walls - becomes a little more empty every day. The rage for the last of a long series of defeats fades away quickly, leaving room for a gloomy despair that now, with the passing of the hours, rolls faster and faster in a resigned indifference, a void of emotion that prevents her from moving, thinking, perhaps even from healing. To what end, anyway? They will all die in a few weeks. Months, if they feel optimistic. 

A sudden itch forces her to stretch out a hand and scrape off a crust of blood and dirt from her neck. A trickle of dark blood starts to flow again on her skin, but Rogue doesn't mind that much. With her fingertips she smoothes away a strand of white hair from her eyes, then she rests her hand again on the pillow as she absently listens to the distant dripping of some hidden pipeline. Her gaze, meanwhile, wanders around the room, until it stops on a half-broken vase placed in the right corner of the floor and filled with white roses. They are beautiful flowers, fresh and fragrant ─ created by the power of a mutant child whose name Rogue can't really remember ─ and they just look so out of place here.

If they still had their school those roses would've been placed on the graves of those for whom they were created, and Beast, Angel and all the others would've rested in a beautiful garden, under the shadows of oak trees, next to Scott and Jean and the useless monument that belonged to Professor Xavier. But in the end, if they still had their school, many of those roses wouldn't have been created at all. Now, however, the roses are here, in the corner of a sagging shack that could also very well turn into a grave any moment from now, and Rogue thinks that if they really are a symbol, like most of the others seem to believe, then they are a symbol of death. As everything else, for that matter. 

She'd cry if she had the strength, but if she wanted to shed even a single tear for each mutant killed, then she'd sob for hours. So Rogue closes her eyes and just tries to stop thinking about it, then she tries to convince her body to fall asleep. And if in the end she succeeds it's really more out of habit than else.

* 

When she wakes up she's no longer alone in the room, and she can feel it even before opening her eyes. The air heavily smells of tobacco, and although it's not the dry smell of the cigars that she's seen him smoking for so many years, just for one moment the hope prevails over her common sense. 

"Logan?", she asks with a small voice. 

" _Non, ma chérie_. There is still no trace of our sunny friend", Gambit answers. 

Rogue opens her eyes and finds him sitting on the floor in front of her, with his back against her bed, his eyes fixed on the opposite wall and a battered cigarette between his fingers. The side of his face that she can see is soaked with blood, and his right shoulder is a little more than a bloody pulp. Rogue's heart loses a beat. 

"Who did they take?" 

"No one. But a few of ours didn't make it"

"Bobby─"

"Iceman is fine. So are Kitty and Storm. The others... I don't know."

Rogue starts breathing again. Gambit turns off the cigarette on the already filthy floor and remains silent for a few minutes, thinking about how to say what he wants to say.

"They want you", he finally mutters, without looking at her. "They didn't said it clearly ─ they don't talk much, _n'est-ce pas_? ─ but it was obvious that they were looking for someone. And since we were almost all there, I believe─"

"I know", she interrupts. She had known since that Sentinel had taken her from behind, completely off guard, and instead of killing her it had purposefully just wounded her. The Sentinels never act like this. 

Gambit turns around to look at her and his face is a battlefield of scars, his eyes black buttons without expression. Rogue holds back the urge to stroke his cheek and instead she lays a hand on the back of his neck, well protected from her touch by the long hair. 

"Your power would be very useful for them", Gambit continues, his voice a bit lower, as she massages his shoulders. "And it'd be very harmful to us if the Sentinels could absorb our powers." 

They both remain very still for a long moment, just looking into each other eyes, while all the possible implications of that truth took shape in the silence between them. 

"You mean that you think I should run away", she says, finally giving substance to his omissions. "I should run away because the other mutants may want to kill me before the Sentinels take me." 

"Not all of them. Just Magneto and his people", Gambit says with a slight shrug. 

Rogue laughs, even if laughing hurts. It's the way he said it, as if it was nothing. _One more or one less that wants to kill you, what's the big deal?_ , he seems to be saying. _After all there is the whole world out there trying to destroy us._

Gambit smiles back, then he leans his elbow on the bed and turns around to kneel in front of her. With a bloody hand he pulls back a locks of hair from her face, careful to touch it just with the tip of his fingers. 

"I can kill him." 

"No, you can't." 

No, he can't. They both know it. 

"Let's run away, then. Before the others come back. You know I am the best fugitive here, _non, ma chérie_? We will find Logan. I am good at that too."

There is no trace of smile on Rogue's face. Suddenly she feels empty again. She'd really love to see Logan again and throw her arms around him, to snuggle against his chest and be enveloped by his arms and his self-confident arrogance. She'd also really love Gambit to kiss her like he clearly wants to do. She'd love to be able to allow him to.

"Marie…", he calls her. 

But she simply turn on her side to make more room in the bed. 

"Hold me, Remy", she sighs, finally. "Just for a while. And mind the burns, please."

He doesn't hesitate to please her. As only Bobby and Logan before him, Remy has never been afraid to touch her, despite everything. When Logan had brought Gambit with him at the school for the first time and hence made the proper introductions, Gambit had smiled when he had learned about her power. _"A woman not to upset"_ , he commented, while kissing her gloved hand. _"Not that I would ever think of doing such a thing"_ , he quickly added. Luckily a sharp slap from Logan had distracted him from seeing her blush.

Now he lies down next to her, on his still intact shoulder, and he cautiously moves his injured arm to wrap it around her waist. Then, from above the blanket, he caress her gently, drawing abstract doodles with his fingertips from her shoulders to her hips. Rogue closes her eyes again and deeply inhales the smell of tobacco that surrounds him, imagining Logan just there, next to them. Imagining him warm and alive and safe.

Meanwhile Gambit's fingers slide down over the curve of her hips, toward the hidden hollow drawn between the gentle roundness of her thighs. If she had gloves on, Rogue would put her hand on his to force him to hasten those slow caresses. But Gambit doesn't want to rush, so he rubs his fingers on the blanket, pushing it more and more against her, reluctantly leaving to the texture's roughness the pleasure of rubbing against the wet and warm fold between her legs. 

Not being able to touch him, Rogue rests her cheek against his shoulder, hiding her face in the warm hollow between his neck and his chest, then she clings to the lapels of his jacket, holding them firmly in her hands, the same hands that ─ for years now ─ so desperately crave to feel other skin under their touch. She feels her cheeks blush when he starts to push harder his fingers against her, rubbing the fabric now more slowly and now more quickly, torturing her with brief moments of pause, and waiting for her pleading sigh before continuing to caress her. 

She can only guess the shape of those fingers now, but even hidden by the shield of the blanket, their concreteness on her body are an undeniable truth, as well as the reactions that they cause. And they are beautiful, those caresses, they are rough and abrupt and violent, and then still rough but now sweet and slow and there is no doubt that he is there, next to her, and maybe this is not sex as he has done or would do with other women, but he doesn't seem to care, so why should it matter to her? 

She thinks about how it would be to have him inside her for real ─ to have him like she had Bobby, in the short period when the cure had done its job, before succumbing again to her mutant gene ─ and that thought does nothing else but excite her even more. So she keeps thinking about how it would be to kiss him, to feel his tongue on her skin, his hands around her nipples, and meanwhile he continues to pleasure her in the only way he can, whispering through her hair words she doesn't understand, or that maybe she doesn't want to understand, since her French it's really not so bad. 

The orgasm immobilizes her in his arms, stiffening up all her muscles. The pain comes back almost immediately, briefly eclipsing even the pleasure, and then it starts to fade away again after the last spasms release all the tension, allowing her to relax again. 

At her side Gambit grunts softly, and Rogue realizes that her whim has cost him more pain than pleasure too. But once again she doesn't complain, and neither does he, because they both have gotten used to the pain long time ago, while the love they share it's still a nice strangeness for both of them, a secret to preserve and renew in silence, only when things seem so much more unpleasant than the usual.

It's a way as any other to go on. 

"We should really leave, _chérie_. Now, before it's too late. "

"Soon", Rogue replies, but they both know that they won't go anywhere. They need to trust the other mutants, because otherwise this war would be even worse than it already is. And Rogue believes in Xavier, she believes in Storm and in all the others, and she hates Magneto, she hates him from the depths of her heart, but she knows that it's wrong. Last but not least, Logan would never run away, so she won't run away either. She'll be here, waiting for him when he'll come back, and then things will get better. Definitely. 

Gambit moves away from her to sprawl on his back, and Rogue favors his movement, only to lay her head on his chest, right over his heart. While they both slide into sleep, Rogue listens to his heartbeat, and that constant rhythm gives her a little courage. Her gaze falls back on the vase in the corner. 

_We're still alive_ , she thinks. _No roses for us._

"Gambit?", she asks suddenly, on the trail of that thought. 

"Oui?", he mumbles, already half asleep. 

"What happened to the roses' boy?" 

"The roses' boy?" 

"The kid mutant that Bishop brought here last time. The one with the power to make flowers bloom everywhere. "

"Oh", he murmurs. " _Chérie_ , the Sentinels have killed him a couple of weeks ago." 

"Ah", Rogue replies. And once again apathy threatens to return to tarnish her mind. For a few minutes she can't think of anything else to say, then she raises her face to stare into Gambit's eyes. "Then when I die it's up to you to bring me a rose, Remy." 

"Marie─"

"Make sure it's red, though. Remember that. A red rose. I'm tired of white roses", she says. Then she rest her head on his chest again, without adding anything else. 

Gambit hesitates a moment, then he nods, and in that limbo between full wakefulness and sleep, surrounded by her smell and still sore from the physical effort and the reopened wounds, for a moment, just one, he thinks he really understand her.


	2. Some might say that we should never ponder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Some might say that we should never ponder on our thoughts today 'cos they hold sway over time_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Returning on a fanfiction written more than eight months ago? YES, I CAN. Also yes, this time we have the Logan/Rogue because OTPs always come back. And yes, there will probably be at least a third chapter, but how and when it's in the hands of the gods, or, more realistically, of the future challenges that'll force me to stop being so lazy.  
> \- Written for the p0rn fest # 8 @ fanfic_italia and for the COWT # 5 @ maridichallenge.

She stands still, surrounded by glass walls and red flashing lights. Beyond the shadows surrounding her prison she can see the dark profiles of the machines and the slightly clearer silhouettes of the technicians managing them. She recognizes no face, only sees gray and fuzzy ovals and glowing eyes, as in a nightmare. Even the sounds arrive muffled to her, as from a great distance. Yet she knows that the real world is right there, just a few feet beyond the glass.

She also knows that there is a collar tightening her throat and inhibiting her powers, she knows there are needles in her arms and straps around her wrists and her ankles, and she knows that they sting and burn and pinch more than they should, but these are almost all theoretical notions: Rogue feels nothing, not even the pain.

She feels like a plastic doll, put on display in its colored box on the top shelf of the children's room. She can see and be seen, but she can not move, can not speak, she can only wait for the moment they'll pull her out of the box to play with her and then throw her away like an old toy. Like a mutant. Strange puppets who do extraordinary things. Beautiful to look at. But only from behind a glass.

She's sleepy.

She also has a vague feeling that should be fear, but at this point it's hard to recognize emotions because they all taste the same (a metallic flavor in the back of her throat, blood and plastic, the taste that would have electricity if Rogue were to give it one), they have the same smell (medicine and sweat, the smell of the hospitals' waiting rooms), and they all make her feel the same thrill on the skin (a slight tingles, first at the base of her neck and then down along her spine, as if someone had just given her a kiss or a hard slap).

Thoughts come and go, like waves of the ocean. The idea strikes her. Maybe she's not a doll in a box, maybe she's a fish in an aquarium. It would explain the cold, the muffled sounds, the blurred vision. It would explain the cats behind the glass. No, not cats. People with cat's eyes. Yellow and empty. (Eyeglasses). There should be bubbles though, and there are none. Rogue's sure she's breathing because she feels the air scraping inside the throat. Maybe there is a ... tube. (Snorkel?). If only she could touch her hair, she'd know right away because it would fluctuate like the Little Mermaid's.

(She remembers sitting with Bobby in the TV room, among the younger children, watching a Disney movie marathon during the Christmas holidays. They had a lot of fun, and at one point even Storm and Professor Xavier had joined them, while Logan said-)

Oh.

Right.

(He said it was kids' stuff and then he smiled, and somehow she realized that he was glad to see her doing kids' stuff rather than risking her life saving the world, because yes, it was the good old days, when they were still heroes saving the world, when becoming exposition dolls or fish in an aquarium was as far away as possible from their minds. Or from hers, at least.)

She closes her eyes. A tingle under the eyelids. (Tears).

She screams. It hurts, but she finally sees the bubbles.

_Logan._

_Logan, help me._

 

*

 

She knows she's dreaming because she has no gloves and someone is still holding her hand with their own. It's a big hand and it's warm and from this too Rogue knows that it's a dream, because in reality she is cold, always so cold.

It doesn't matter. A dream is better than nothing.

She opens her eyes to peek around, but the sun makes her close them immediately. It's so bright it blinds, so hot it burns even under her bare feet. Hot sand between her toes. Warm and salty wind on her face. Gulls. Her father often used to took her to see the ocean when she was a child. (A normal child). A long time ago.

(She remembers a lecture by Professor Xavier on the subconscious and its unlimited ability to absorb, catalog, dismember, rework and re-propose the reality in the strangest and unexpected ways. "The dream machine," he called it. And Rogue would laugh, but she doesn't want to ruin everything.)

It's Logan at her side. She knows it even before she grasps the nauseating whiff of his cigar, even before feeling his beard scraping against the corner of her mouth when he bends down to kiss her. ( _Just a dream_ ). ( _Better than nothing_ ).

Rogue presses her lips against his and puts her arms around his neck. It's a fantasy, so she might as well indulge in it. Logan's shirtless and his hair tickles her skin in a delicious way. His mouth tastes like tobacco, his hands are rough, his caresses soft.

"Your ice cream is melting, little girl," he says after a moment, and only then Rogue realizes she's holding an ice cream cone in her other hand. Strawberry and chocolate. She doesn't even remember when it was the last time that-

"Hey, and my ice cream?"

Rogue turns around. Now she can see the beach, the ocean's waves breaking against the rocky shore, and Gambit standing on top of the rocks. He stands so high above the beach that she has to look up to meet his eyes, and when she does so, he gives her a wide smile, but the sun behind him creates strange games of shadows, and for a moment Rogue is not sure that he's smiling, for a moment it almost seems like he's screaming.

_Marie._

_MARIE._

 

*

 

She was with him when they took her, she remembers now. Remembering it's difficult because of the drug (she's certain that they're drugging her now, because there had never been dreams before) and also because the only consequence of remembering is making her feel even more miserable than she already is, so it's a lot easier for her to avoid it.

"We should've run away when we could have," she thinks, but it's a circumstantial thought, a regret that it's not really a regret, an alternative that even if she had the chance to go back in time, she already knows she'd not take anyway.

She remembers the way Remy shouted her name. The pain in his eyes. His outstretched hand. The disbelief on his face. ( _But we knew that it was gonna happen. I knew it, so you had to know it too. I'm sorry, Gambit. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry_ ).

She remembers a hovel and a vase hidden in the corner, and wonders if there is a white rose for her now, or if Gambit remembered to pick up a red one. ( _I'm not dead yet_ ). ( _It's the same thing_ ).

She remembers that the first time she met Logan, he was in a cage too.

She remembers the snow and the cold, and the way he tried to take her hands to help her warm up.

She remembers a military tag, a train and a promise, a kiss on her forehead.

She screams again because now she knows that if she screams, or at least try to, the monsters on the other side of the glass will do their best to put her to sleep.

_Make me stop remembering._

 

*

 

The dream takes place somewhere else now, and it's a completely different dream, much more complicated. It's the dream of another life, in another world. The dream of how things would be if everything went well.

They are in the school garden, it's one of the first warm days of spring and the snow placidly melts in the sun, making trees dripping on the ground, discovering large patches of pale green grass between their roots.

“I had a crush on you when I was a kid, did you knew it?", she says, and her voice is the voice of an adult woman, no longer a girl. So she knows she's interpreting the future version of herself, one that probably she will never see reflected in a mirror, a future version of herself that maybe will never exist if not here, in this corner of her mind, as a side effect of a heavy drug.

She turns toward the man sitting beside her on the bench under the willows' shade, and she notes that, apart from a few strands of gray hair, Logan is exactly the same as she remembered, but this is hardly a surprise.

She sees him laugh softly, and smiles back.

"Yes, you knew," she concludes. Not that she really needed a confirmation anyway.

"I was too old for you. I still am", Logan replies.

"But I am not too young for you anymore, am I? I am no longer a little girl."

"Mh," he mutters, without compromising himself.

From the basketball court come the screams of the children, engaged in a game where the real goal is to use their power to win without the others noticing them too much. Professor Xavier's walking side by side with Jean, not far from them Gambit flirts with Kitty under Bobby's annoyed gaze, while Beast and Scott discuss football or something.

"It would have been nice," Logan murmurs.

( _It would have been nice_ )

 

*

 

She's choking. The needles dig into her skin and they hurt, they hurt a lot. She opens her eyes, tries to kick. A cat has approached her glass cage. He looks huge, but she remembers him very little.

Trask scribbles something on his notepad, watching from behind his round glasses. He has a half-smile on his face and Rogue thinks:

_If only I still had my powers._

Professor Xavier would not approve, but she doesn't care. If she could, she would kill this evil little man and his assistants. She would kill them all. She would make him pay for the war, for the fallen friends, for the persecutions, the Sentinels, the inhibitors collars, the chains, for this water cage and the drugged dreams, for all the pain she can not even fully feel but that still burns a hole in her chest.

_I will kill you_ , she thinks again. And then, more realistically:

_I will die here._

 

*

 

If her subconscious can reshape reality, then she can reshape her dreams, Rogue decides.

So they're in a bed. A big, white bed, covered in a pile of blankets as soft as silk. The door-window is wide open on a barely sketched dawn, and the crisp morning breeze caresses her bare leg, making her shiver.

Outside the window, the profiles of the snow-capped mountains, huge oak trees surrounding the lawn of a cabin that she has never seen but imagines she can call home.

“I had a crush on you when I was a kid, did you knew it?", she asks again, her head buried in the pillow, a lock of ruffled hair in front of her eyes.

Logan laughs again, but this time he gives her a mischievous look.

"And now no more?", he questions with a look that perhaps, in his intentions, would be offended.

"Now I love you," Rogue simply replies. It's a truth so beautiful and so free, without consequences, that she almost wants to cry. She had never said it before, and now she'd gladly pass the rest of her life saying nothing else other than that. _I love you, Logan. I love you, I love you, I love you._

Logan leans over her to kiss her.

_(No.)_

_(Yes.)_

_(He'll die.)_

(Rogue think about it for a moment and then decides that in this future her powers are not a problem. She's already dreaming of the impossible, so why restrict herself?)

So Logan kisses her.

"I love you too."

They're still naked under the sheets, so Rogue slips a hand down his chest, enjoying the bumps of his muscles under the tip of her fingers. She finds Logan's half erection and smiles, holding it in her hand.

"Good morning," she laughs softly, and Logan bites her lip in retaliation, then bows his head and licks her nipple, making her shiver.

"Good morning to you."

They roll on the mattress, laughing, and Rogue ends up on top of him - not that Logan has fought back so much, she's forced to admit. She runs her fingers along his erection, enjoying the muffled moan coming from him. She doesn't resist, however, when he sits up and grabs her by her hips, dragging her closer to him, until her knees are pressed to the sides of his thighs and Rogue's sitting in his lap.

"Bully", she whispers with a smile, then she fastens her arm around his neck and slips down a hand between their bodies, to grab his erection and drive it inside her. Meanwhile Logan's hands slide down to her buttocks, both to support her and to keep her closer to him, and he squeezes her so hard that his fingers sink into her skin.

He roughly pushes himself inside of her and almost leaves her breathless, but then Rogue pushes herself back against him, and starts to move following the rhythm of their breathing.

"What did you say?", Logan asks against her neck, a minute or an hour later. Rogue bends her head to one side, biting her lip, trying to gather her thoughts while they move faster and faster.

"You're a bully", she repeats in a whisper, arching against him.

In response, Logan slaps her ass.

"Hey!", she protests, and she'd like to sound outraged, but a laugh escapes from her lips.

"What did you expect from a bully, little girl?", he replies, and while Rogue's looking for a good answer to give him their movements become slower and slower as the pleasure grows, so right now thinking is really not the simplest of things to do.

So Rogue kisses him again, with as much force as possible, abandoning herself to the orgasm.

_I love you._

_(It would have been really nice)_

 

*

 

_I will die here._

It's her first thought when she wakes up, because now that it has been expressed it's impossible to send it away. As smoke, it lingers in the corners of her mind, tainting everything else.

She'll die here, in this aquarium, in this box, with no roses and no tears. She'll die with the knowledge that she was used against her friends, that she'll become part of the Sentinels, just like Mystique before her. She'll die as an unintentional traitor, but as a traitor anyway.

She closes her eyes. The drug is losing ita effect on her body, but if she focuses really hard she can still imagine Logan's lips on hers, the tickling of his beard on her cheeks.

And in the next dream she could see Gambit. Or both of them together. She tries to smile, but now her body doesn't seem to belong to her anymore. Now she only has her thoughts.

She'll die here, yes, but hopefully at least she'll die dreaming.

 

_(Some might say that we should never ponder  
on our thoughts today 'cos they hold sway over time)_

**Author's Note:**

> \- This story is based on a couple of assumptions: first, that beside Mystique's, the XMDOFP Sentinels have been created thanks to Rogue's DNA too, in order to absorb the power and then replicate it. The second is, therefore, that in the original timeline Rogue still has her powers, despite the fact that in the last movie she took the cure (the idea that it could be only temporary, however, is already suggested by the end of The Last Stand, when Erik in the placid-grampa-at-the-park version finds out that he can still move the chessman). In short, if there are any errors or inaccuracies, know that I have done my best.
> 
> \- In the movieverse I ship Logan/Rogue like burning, but Gambit and Rogue came straight from my childhood, mostly spent in front of the TV, watching the animated series of the X-Men. So yes, I know that in the movies Gambit and Rogue have never met each other, but it really takes a lot more than that to discourage me.
> 
> \- English is not my first language, if you see any mistake please let me know, I'd appreciate it.


End file.
